Which would be the best size for different WP7 controls(like listview items, buttons etc) in order to be "finger friendly"? Is any resource that handle this problem?
According to the UI Design and Interaction Guide for Windows Phone 7 v2.0:
Touch targets should not be smaller than 9 mm or 34 pixels square and
provide at least 2 mm or 8 pixels between touchable controls. In excep-
tional cases, controls can be smaller but never more than 7 mm or 26
pixels square. The on-screen keyboard and hyperlinks in Windows Phone®
Internet Explorer® are an exception because they have differently sized hit
targets.
Related
I am currently working on a GUI at a Windows 7 64-bit PC. While comparing the visualisation of text in different programs, I recognized, that there are differences in how big text is displayed on my monitor, given the same text style and size.
Does anyone has an idea where this comes from?
I created this behaviour by typing a text in Arial Regular 12pt containing the letter T in a program and scaling the view to 100%. Afterwards I measured the height of the letter T in pixels with the help of a screenshot.
Programs I testet:
MS Word 2010: T is 12 pixels high
LibreOffice Writer 5.2.7.2 (x64): T is 12 pixels high
Scribus 1.4.6: T is 12 pixels high
GIMP 2.8.14: T is 9 pixels high
Java 8 Update 181 (which I use for my own GUI): T is 9 pixels high
pt (point) is a unit for physical sizes, typically 1/72th of an inch.
In order to transfer this to a size in pixels, you need to know how many pixels will be in one inch on your screen. This value is known as Pixels Per Inch (PPI), sometimes somewhat ambiguously called Dots Per Inch (DPI).
Note that this value will usually be different for an application UI and the documents you are working on.
From the values you provided, it looks like MS Word, LibreOffice and Scribus assume 72 PPI (or at least the documents you are working on do), whereas GIMP and Java use 96 PPI.
It's not obvious whether you are referring to the size of text ion the respective applications' UI or documents opened in them, though, so I could be totally off.
I want to create a custom live tile. I just need to display a number with large digits (1 to 4 digits) in the center of the tile, no icon, no text or anything else and it should be possible to update the tile also.
I have tried the default tile, but it displays the number at the up-right corner with small font and cannot pass number 99.Any ideas? (programming in Visual Basic)
I wrote a guide, how to render your own tiles even with transparency, but beware of the memory consumption in background agent. Typically you should render at max only one tile:
Pro Live Tiles for Windows Phone
http://suchan.cz/?p=110
If I maximize a Delphi form the width and height values are 8 pixles greater that the corresponding GetSystemMetrics SM_CXSCREEN and SM_CYSCREEN?
For Example:
When I right click on my screen and get properties I have a 1680 X 1050 screen resolution. Those are the same values returned from GetSystemMetrics(SM_CXSCREEN) and GetSystemMetrics(SM_CYSCREEN).
When I maximize the form in my Delphi application I get a width of 1688 and a height of 1058. There is an 8 pixel difference. What causes this difference?
When maximized windows were originally implemented, the designers wanted to remove the resizing borders. Rather than removing them, they instead decided to draw those borders beyond the edges of the screen, where they would not be seen. Hence the rather surprising window rectangle of a maximized window.
This implementation decision became a problem with the advent of multi-monitor systems. By that time there were applications that relied on this behaviour and so the Windows team decided to retain the behaviour for the sake of compatibility. This meant that maximized windows leaked onto neighbouring screens. In time the window manager acquired capabilities that meant it could suppress that leakage.
Raymond Chen, as usual, has an article that covers the details: Why does a maximized window have the wrong window rectangle?
I wrote simple program, which catches WM_GETMINMAXINFO. This message allows one to modify position and size of maximized window, before the actual maximization takes place. The default values provided by system were:
Position.x: -8
Position.y: -8
Size.x: 1456 (= 8 + width of screen + 8)
Size.y: 916 (= 8 + height of screen + 8)
The resolution of my screen is 1440x900.
It seems, that Windows positions the window after the maximization in such way, that the client area covers the most the available space and window's chrome is hidden outside the screen area.
I have a VB6 application and one of the Form icon is set as application icon. The problem is that in Windows 7 the icon looks blurred even though the icon contains 16x16, 32x32 and 48x48 sizes.
Is there a way around this problem? It tried the SendMessage(... SETICON... ICON_BIG) but it does not seems to work.
What colour depth are the icons in your ico file?
VB6 (I believe) supports a maximum 8 bit colour depth (256 colours) for icons:-
So if there is no size 48 x 48 icon in 8 bit colour depth it could be using the nearest match and scaling it to 48 x 48
EDIT:
I just tried this using an icon that did not have a 48 x 48 icon at 8 bit depth (but did have 48 x 48 at higher depths) and the icon used in the taskbar was the 32bit icon at 8 bit colour depth.
I don't claim to understand the full heuristics used to choose the icon image to display in various places, but I think what is happening here is that your 48x48 image is being taken and scaled down.
I suspect what happens with a VB6 program on many versions of Windows is that if there is no 16-color 16x16 image then a larger size gets taken and scaled. The reason may simply be due to the order of the images in the ICO resource/file.
If you edit your ICO and add a 16-color version of your 16x16 image your "problem" may disappear.
I am looking for the Windows Look and Feel Design Guidelines (but not the one for Windows Vista!) that details the ideal gap between elements, etc. I found the document originally a few years back on MSDN but now I can't find it.
I've started a new job the same thing is occuring here as before: A program written and added to over the years by several different people with differing ideas about UI. While I've got a chance on a Friday afternoon I'd thought I'd tidy up the layout
I think I found it here: http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/System/platform/pcdesign/XPguidelines.mspx
Its new home is:
MSDN Library
Windows Development
Windows Application UI Development
Windows User Experience Interaction Guidelines
Guidelines
Visuals
Layout → Recommended Sizing and Spacing
e.g.:
Control sizing
The following table lists the recommended sizes (width x height, or height if a single number) for common UI elements (for 9 pt. Segoe UI at 96 dpi). The widths based on the longest item in English add 30 percent for localization (up to 200 percent for shorter text) for any text (but not numbers) that will be localized.
Command Buttons
(source: microsoft.com)
Dialog Units: 50 x 14
Relative Pixels: 75 x 23
Spacing
The following table lists the recommended spacing between common UI elements (for 9 pt. Segoe UI at 96 dpi).
Dialog box margins
(source: microsoft.com)
Dialog Units: 7 on all sides
Relative Pixels: 11 on all sides
Text label beside a control
(source: microsoft.com)
Dialog Units: 3 down from the top of the control
Relative Pixels: 5 down from the top of the control
There's also the page that explains what Dialog Units are: Layout, Device Independent Layout: